Field
This disclosure is generally related to establishing secure network connections. More specifically, this disclosure is related to generating and/or processing Interest and Content Object packets that include an encrypted name suffix.
Related Art
Advancements in computer networks and wireless technologies have made it easier for manufacturers to create Internet-enabled consumer devices. Some of these Internet-enabled devices come in the form of consumer appliances, such as digital thermostats, home-theater equipment, and home security systems. Manufacturers oftentimes provide software applications and/or online services that allow a user to remotely access or configure their devices. Also, many of these devices can auto-discover each other, and can stream data between each other to provide a unified experience for the user. One example is home-entertainment equipment, where a user's laptop or mobile computing device can detect the presence of a television or audio-video receiver (AVR) within a computer network, and can stream content to the television or AVR to present the content to a user.
These Internet-enabled consumer devices can communicate with an online service or with a peer consumer device by establishing a transmission control protocol (TCP) connection over an Internet-protocol (IP) network. Oftentimes, these consumer devices can establish a secure connection that encrypts the user's information by employing a transport layer security (TLS) protocol or a secure socket layer (SSL) protocol that encrypts data before transmitting the data over the IP network.
Unfortunately, the TLS and SSL protocols are specific to IP-based network protocols, and cannot be used to establish a secure connection on other types of computer networks. For example, smartphone and other mobile devices oftentimes switch between different networks within a single day, which makes it difficult to reach a given mobile device when its IP address has changed. To solve this problem, computer scientists are developing a content-centric network (CCN) architecture that allows a computer network to route packets based on the packet's name, and not based on a device's IP address. However, it is not possible to use the TLS or SSL protocol on a CCN network, given that the TLS and SSL protocols require using an IP address to establish the network connection.